Free as a bird

You may or may not know this already, but I'm fascinated by bird cages. I've been keeping my eyes open for the perfect bird cage necklace, and have been scouring NZ jewellery sites and Etsy to find one.

Here are my favs:

Pretty, and pink


Not sure on the little red hearts attached to this one, but I love the black cage



The chain on this is stunning:




I think this is my favourite.




One bird is free from the cage! The site says the shipping is also free, but sadly, I think not to New Zealand.


While I'm on the topic of darling jewellery, I have to show you these Forget-me-not earrings from a Kiwi designer.




Also, spend some time perusing the Quoil store, online here, or at their store on Willis St in Wellington. I have spent many a happy time opening the many drawers of intricate jewellery pieces.

Dance me to the end of love

As much as I might like to leave this blog covered with pretty paintings of breasts, I feel impelled to make Monday blog day. I write this from my Aro Valley boudoir, with Brian Eno's 1/1 hesitating notes on my stereo. The banded high cloud fights with blue across my bay window skyscape, and I am content.

I am cuddled up in fine burgundy sheets, my new Salvation Army latte-hued fleur de lis-patterned duvet draped across tired, Ricochet-encased limbs. I'm absent-mindedly stroking a pimple that is threatening to mar my otherwise clear complexion, thinking mundane thoughts of housework and study, wanting to sleep this Moon Day away.

The lovely Tom has lent me Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", which I last read falling in love in another city, in another country.

I think Kundera has a simple and beautiful way of summarising many aspects of life. This morning this passage appealed to my current situation:

<
1) a high enough degree of general well-being to enabe people to devote their energies to useless activities;

2) an advanced state of social atomization and the resultant general feeling of the isolation of the individual;

3) a radical absence of significant social change in the internal development of the nation. (In this connection I find it symptomatic that in France, a country where nothing really happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times higher than that in Israel. Bibi was absolutely right when she claimed never to have experienced anything from the outside. It is this absence of content, this void, that powers the motor driving her to write).

"everyone surrounds himself with his own writings as with a wall of mirrors cutting off all voices from without". >>

Discuss.

Hayley Lenehan

This morning I really want to write about my amazing friend from Brisbane, Hayley Lenehan. I found out this year she paints, and I love love love her art.

Hayley's figures have this wonderful edgy, indie quality, but can also have quite emotive aspects.








Hayley is a talented artist, and I hope to own a few of her pieces soon. What really made me want to write about her, is that she's a mum. She finds the time, somehow, in between running around after her energetic son, to create these amazing work.

I don't know what aspirations you have to create. I have about a million felt pieces I want to make right now, and the only thing stopping me, is the other tasks I prioritise as 'more important' than my art.

So that's inspiration for me, to stay at home, be anti-social for a bit, and create, create, create!





Hayley doesn't have a website, as far as I know right now, but leave a comment if you want to purchase/commission any of her work and I'll put you in touch with her.

"I love you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm"

I predict a sleepy, dreamy Monday for Miss Anna, full of felt making, hot chocolate drinking, and Leonard Cohen.

I awoke with streams of condensation on my window. It's either very cold outside, or I was doing some serious heavy-breathing in my dreams. I can't remember, I slept deeply. I awoke with this song in my head:

"I'm not looking for another
As I wander in my time,
Walk me to the corner
Our steps will always rhyme,
You know my love goes with you
As your love stays with me,
It's just the way it changes
Like the shoreline and the sea,
But let's not talk of love or chains
And things we can't untie"

I'm thinking about past relationships and serving saxophonists oranges and black chai in bed, "And she feeds you tea and oranges/That come all the way from China".

I'm thinking about lovers, and rebirth, and heat that purifies, heat that boils personality down to both less and more than anything previous.

"And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind, and you know she will trust you, because she's touched your perfect body with her mind."

I'm thinking of my sisters, my Tanya and my Lisette, and how I will see them soon, but five days in Brisbane will not be nearly long enough to truly catch up from 10 months spent in another city.

"And no one knows where the night is going
And no one knows why the wine is flowing
Oh love I need you...."

Thinking of the personality traits, baggage and hopes that skew our relationship views, the myriad colours and hues.

I write like I love, all encompassing, passionately, with no thought for anything else, or not at all, and the idea of writing, or loving, does not enter my misshapen sphere of existence.

I am two weeks into massage course, blissful, more centred, with a slight smirk on my face and a bounce, as always, in my step.

Perhaps one should never write in situations of extreme comfort. Cliches creep into my vernacular, but I will reiterate that I have never attempted a position of intellectuality in my writing or conversations. I told Miss Jo Hubris last night I appreciate communicating a candyfloss first impression, to come across as a flirty airhead, and watch with interest which topics are broached.

I have aeons of time for leisure. I'm reading Oryx and Crake, and planning to cook a lucky gentleman pancakes with maple syrup shortly. I'm having a masquerade party on Friday, if any Wellingtonians wish to attend, contact me on Twitter. There will be photos. And drunkening.

Chandeliers and candlelight

Photos I took at Duke Carvell's







Lover, I can hear you singing in my soul

Words I love

diaphanous
miasma
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
myriad
debonair
ephemeral
transience
interminable
seven